This is but the Beginning<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } cite { font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  This is but the Beginning </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=Mark+13:1-8"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Mark 13:1-8</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <p>Do you remember the very first time you saw downtown Dallas from a distance? Perhaps, if you grew up here, downtown kind of grew up with you. For those of us who did not grow up here and who had occasion to come into town from time to time before we lived here, downtown Dallas was always kind of an overwhelming experience. Especially as we came in from a distance. You could see the lights in the skyscrapers. From the earliest days of my childhood I remember being in awe of downtown Dallas as we drove in from West Texas on what is now I-30. Even in my high school and college years, I remember being transfixed by the sight of the skyline.</p> <p>Even today, it still is incredible to look at. Especially after they put up Reunion Tower in the early 80s. Remember? During the day it looked like a giant golf ball the Jolly Green Giant teed up to play. At night, it looked like a big Christmas ornament, all strapped with white lights glistening. Being from a small West Texas community, where the tallest building in town was the old high school at a whopping three stories, seeing the buildings reach hundreds of feet into the air to scratch the underbellies of the clouds was just overwhelming.</p> <p>Maybe that's what the disciples were thinking and feeling. Being country boys from Galilee, they just couldn't get over the magnificence of the architecture when they went to the big city, Jerusalem. <strong>"Look, Teacher,"</strong> they said, <strong>"what large stones and what large buildings!"</strong> Jesus took this whole awe-struck moment for them as a teaching moment in their lives. <strong>"Do you see these great buildings?"</strong> he asked. <strong>"Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."</strong></p> <p>Most immediately, Jesus seems to have been predicting the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, which did, of course, take place in 70 AD. At this particular moment for the disciples, it was more than a pre-history lesson that had Jesus concerned and should have us concerned. Even for us, the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2006, there's a deeper message to Jesus" words that stretches well beyond mid-first-century Christianity to our 21st century world and the way we, as followers of Jesus, will choose to live in it.</p> <p>In fact, there are several. May I enumerate just one or two or three very quickly? It seems, for one thing, that Jesus was warning the disciples about being deceived by what is apparently successful instead of what is eternally meaningful. The buildings that awed the disciples that day didn't have much of a future. But, when they're that big and bigger, they sure can look like the pinnacle of success. To that, Jesus said, <strong>"Not one stone here will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."</strong></p> <p>This is not primarily where I want to spend my time this morning. But, it's worth going off the road for just a moment and using it as a spiritual rest stop, if you will. Maybe our thanksgiving world would be filled with more giving of thanks if we were more enamored with what God is up to in our lives that makes them eternally meaningful than how our lives compare to the immediate apparent success of others. Nothing will destroy a thankful spirit or season more than the sin of comparison. It's hard not to compare our lives to other people's lives, isn't it? It's hard not to measure our significance, our beauty, or whatever, without comparing them to others. It's amazing, the places at which the sin of comparison can infiltrate our lives.</p> <p>Something very funny happened this past week, in fact. I guess many of you probably watched <em>Dancing with the Stars.</em> Well, while Rob was away from home, Kaden and Michelle Collins were watching Mario cut the rug. Somewhere in the middle of the dancing, seven-year-old Kaden turned to her mother and said, "Wow! His muscles really pop out!" A little time went by. Silence. A little more dancing. Kaden turned to her mom again and said, "Mom, do you wish Daddy's did that?" Mario compared to Rob?</p> <p>What do you wish your life were instead of what it is? By what standard of comparison do you make that judgment? Beware at Thanksgiving. There's a bottomless pit of hopelessness and futility called the sin of comparison, especially when that standard is the standard by which you measure the meaning of your life, which is the eternal gift of God to you.</p> <p>At a breakfast meeting during the Baptist General Convention of Texas this past week, I heard these words that cut against the immediate gratification grain. "I'm not overly concerned about the prosperity theology that permeates the media-type preachers. I am concerned that we Baptists seem to believe that something must be successful to be of God. We see it in our church structures and in the denomination itself. Unless the numbers on Sunday morning are getting better, the receipts are increasing, and people are talking about our ministries with a buzz, then we must not be doing the work of God. Yet, nowhere in scripture is success the measurement for doing the work of God. In the hard places of our world, success is not a measurement for Kingdom advance. Baptists and other like-minded Christians are growing at phenomenal rates in places where there are few human measures of success. In Africa, in Latin America, and in Asia, where the economic standards are measured in dollars a day, God's kingdom is marching forward, and lives are being dramatically changed through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe that one of the reasons we have a hard time helping people see that our work is meaningful is because what we want them to see is us as successful, rather than faithful." <cite>(Ken Hall, Texas Baptists Committed Breakfast Address, Baptist General Convention of Texas, November 14, 2006).</cite></p> <p>Those words spoke to me. Jesus spoke to all of us when he warned the disciples about being overwhelmed by the apparent visual evidence of success that's truly passing away. He was also warning the disciples and you and me to think for ourselves. <strong>"Beware that no one leads you astray,"</strong> Jesus said. <strong>"Many will come in my name and say, "I am he!" and they will lead many astray."</strong> One of the greatest disciplines of the Christian faith is learning to think with an open mind yet not one that is so wide open that there is no check whatsoever on stupidity and shallowness in the name of faith. It was in that spirit that Jesus then led his disciples to think what it would mean when all that appeared to be successful the big stones and the buildings was eventually demolished.</p> <p><strong>"When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,"</strong> Jesus said, <strong>"do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines."</strong> Then he said, <strong>"This is but the beginning of the birth pangs."</strong></p> <p>Jesus was warning the disciples of something not all that unfamiliar to us. Something we've discussed recently. When the buildings in Jerusalem came down, it wasn't just going to be the collapse of their architecture but the collapse of their very culture that would be so difficult. As we've discussed lately, all around us, there is evidence that, yet again, our culture is in the process of collapse. Maybe not so much the collapse of literal physical structures, but the collapse of pretty much everything else that has defined American culture up until now, and especially our sense of Christian identity within it.</p> <p>The influence of the church in this culture is collapsing. If you were here last Sunday and you heard Dr. Albert Reyes, you were blessed by his message as he reminded us that the fastest-growing churches in the world are now south of the equator, both in Africa and South America. We think of ourselves as a Christian nation when in fact, by every standard of measurement, we are becoming less and less so, while other cultures around the world, mostly poverty-stricken, are in the process of becoming more Christian than are we.</p> <p>In political thought, in scientific thought, in economic thought, in government policy, even in the family, the Christian way of thinking in America appears to be having less and less influence by the day. The structures, the stones stacked upon each other, of our culture, supported predominantly by a Christian worldview, seem to be collapsing in every way you can imagine. That seems, at first glance, to be nothing but bad news. But is it?</p> <p>Jesus was not just asking the disciples that day to be careful about how they defined success. He was also asking them to discipline their way of thinking, specifically to not just let any thought take permanent root, but also to discipline themselves to see beyond the immediately bad to the eternally good in the bad and what God would eventually accomplish. Herein, at this particular point, is where I find meaning for this particular Thanksgiving.</p> <p>Jesus said, "See to it that no one -- not the cynics, not the naysayers, not the unhopeful -- see to it that no one leads you astray." Don't let today's headlines of wars and rumors of wars and famines around the world define your view of God's work in the world. Let hope for what God is up to in the world, no matter what the world is up to, <em>let hope for what God is up to</em> define the way you see the world and your place in it, no matter what is happening in your life.</p> <p>Jesus seemed to be saying that what we would see is the collapse of our culture but that what we are to look for is what hope is giving birth to even as our culture collapses. <strong>"This,"</strong> Jesus said, <strong>"is but the beginning."</strong> This collapse, this apparently tragic process of collapsing structures that give our life a definition and sense of normality, this collapse really is but the beginning of something very, very good.</p> <p>I've always wanted to see a human baby born. I've seen dogs and pigs born, but never a human. I've about decided it's probably not going to happen because I haven't had any expectant mothers volunteer to give me that opportunity. So, I depend on Nancy to tell me about it. As a neo-natal intensive care nurse she's often called into the birthing room. She says that when a baby is being born she can always tell the difference between the women who have been given the epidural and those who got there too late to get it by the screams of pain. They sound brutal. But, the screams of pain are heralding something new coming into the world.</p> <p>Can we, before we cut the turkey and dip it in the dressing, make this all very personal? Take a look around you. Today may be the very worst day of your life. You may find yourself standing in a place of unimaginable pain and perplexity. You may have lost all hope. Maybe you're even questioning whether or not you have the will to keep on living. Take a close look at where you are standing or sitting, literally, because you may be surprised to look back someday and see how close you were, in the darkest moment of your life, to the brightest hope you've ever known.</p> <p>We are never, ever outside the reach of God's grace, no matter where we stand. No matter where you are standing in this moment, maybe literally standing or sitting in this moment, it is likely the very place in which God will demonstrate his grace in your life in ways you simply cannot imagine. Jesus said that where the stones that define our sense of security and normality fall, in that very place, God's eternal purpose will be reborn into humanity.</p> <p>When a woman is giving birth, her womb is both the place of the unimaginable pain and at the same time indescribable joy. Jesus even referred to that in his Gospel. He said, <strong>"A little while, and you'll no longer see me. Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn. But the world will rejoice. You will have pain. But your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So, you have pain now, but I will see you again. And your hearts will rejoice. And no one will take your joy from you."</strong></p> <p>So, take a look. In the middle of whatever you're experiencing today, take a look and see what God is giving birth to in the place where, for now, all you can do is scream and cry.</p> <p>I've come to think of all of this as what I describe as the geography of grace. Today, when I stand and look at the city of Dallas from a distance I see the places where, sometimes, literally within blocks of each other, the very worst things and the very best things that ever happened to me, happened in virtually the same places.</p> <p>Every exit is also an entrance. Every collapse, a place of birth. Every death, a chance for new life. I am not one of those who says, "We know there is a reason for everything." I don't believe that. Yet, time and again, when a tragic accident occurs and innocent lives are lost, a reporter sticks a microphone in some poor soul's face, and they, trying to say something hopeful, will say, "Well, we know all things happen for a reason." As if to assign to divine, holy God responsibility for the most evil and tragic things that happen.</p> <p>I don't believe that all things happen for a reason, if by that we mean that we are just pawns on a giant chess board whose lives are being manipulated by a divine force without regard to the pain and tragedy that movement may inflict. I do believe that, even in the worst of life, God's grace can give birth to new hope. All things don't happen for a reason as much as God can give reason to anything. For that, I am very thankful.</p> <p>Just this week I heard of a survey taken in the United States, trying to determine which demographic groups were happiest. Turns, out, the most miserable people among us tend to be those from ages twenty to twenty-nine years of age. If you are twenty-five and miserable, there you have it. The happiest group among us tends to be those over sixty. I wonder what that's about?</p> <p>Maybe it's perspective. When you're twenty and just driving into town, you spend a lot of time wondering how you'll compare to all those who've already arrived and made their mark. When you're older, happiness may be downtown in your rearview mirror. As you look back at the place where you learned that, even in your worst failures, God is at work doing his best with nothing but the wide open vistas of eternal hope stretching out before you, you tend more toward gratefulness. What do you think?</p> <hr width="100%" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Glen Schmucker, Pastor </td> <td> <div align=right>  November 12, 2006 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2006, Glen Schmucker </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>